Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that some of its titles are now available on Oyster and Scribd, two of the leading e-book subscription services. The move makes Simon & Schuster the second of the Big 5 publishers to experiment with the relatively new e-book subscription market.

As part of the agreement, Simon & Schuster will make available its entire backlist of thousands of books, including works by authors ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Stephen King.

Eric Stromberg, cofounder and CEO of Oyster, framed the deal as a strong endorsement for the e-book subscription market, or as he put it, the access model. "We see this deal with Simon & Schuster as a tipping point for the access model for books," Stromberg told Mashable. "It is accelerating quickly."

In truth, it took quite some time for Simon & Schuster to come around to the idea. The publisher had been in talks with the startups for more than a year, but opted to pursue a licensing deal with Entitle, a different kind of e-book subscription service, which essentially lets customers download two, three or four e-books a month for a fixed price, rather than rent and browse through an unlimited number of e-books like on Oyster and Scribd.

Doug Stambaugh, VP of global ebook strategy for Simon & Schuster, notes that Entitle essentially has an "ownership model," which the publisher was more comfortable with. Over time, however, Oyster and Scribd evolved their payment model to something more amenable to authors and the publisher. At the same time, these unlimited subscription services appeared to gain traction and media attention.

"These guys have gotten a lot of press and a lot of attention and we decided to take a try at the model," Stambaugh says. "Obviously this kind of subscription model has been very beneficial for movies and television, and we want to try it out and see if this will be something that expands the market for books."

Oyster first announced its service in late 2012 and launched its iPhone and iPad apps following year. Scribd, a popular document sharing service, expanded into e-book subscriptions in October, 2013. Both launched with books from HarperCollins, another one of the Big 5 publishers.

The selection of books from Simon & Schuster will be the same for both Oyster and Scribd. "We’re not picking favorites between the two," Stambaugh says. "We expect there will be potentially other players over time, but we don’t really know."

When asked whether he expects the unlimited or limited subscription model to win out, Stambaugh admitted that publishers don't have a good idea about what customers want for their digital books.

"I don't think we we have a good handle at this point about what consumers preferences are," he says, "which is a good reason we are doing these deals."

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